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AppendixA Sample Business Continuity Plan for ABC Co.

The following plan represents a good overview for BC operations. It is based on numerous sources and includes the minimum information needed to function in a BC relocation operation. This plan is not complete, as there is limited space in this text for a complete BC plan. In many cases, annotations inside braces—for example, {Additional Details}—have been used to indicate that planners would include additional information for the use of its BC team members.

Overview

To ensure that ABC Co. continues to function in its competitive arena, minimum func- tional requirements have been established to sustain critical operations if the primary facilities are damaged or destroyed. Should the extent of such damage preclude con- tinued operations within the facility itself, some or all of the organization’s functions will be relocated to an alternate site as planned.

Objectives

The objectives of this plan are twofold:

1. To ensure that critical business functions are maintained while the organization reestablishes operations at the primary facility or at a new permanent alternate facility

2. To minimize the impact of interruptions on the services provided to our customers

Note that the plan presented here cannot possibly account for every possible event, thus the management team must use its discretion in reacting to each unique scenario.

Business Continuity Plan for ABC Co.

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{Additional examples should be provided. Note the rankings here are examples, your esti- mates will be dependent on your situation}

Category 1: Building Loss or Unavailability Ranking Building loss due to fire: 7

Loss of main HQ building Worst case: Catastrophic loss

Implement BC Option A Best case: Loss of 1 or fewer offices

Implement BC Option C Most likely: Loss of 40–50% of offices

Implement BC Option B Loss of production facility Loss of data center

Building loss due to tornado: 5 Building loss due to flooding: 3 Building loss due to other circumstances: 1

{Note: For each category and subcategory, this document would contain a brief overview, taken from the BIA, of the threats and potential attack scenarios along with the correspond- ing BC plan options to be implemented if this particular version occurs.}

Category 2: Data Loss or Unavailability Data loss due to natural disaster (fire, flood, tornado, and so on): 3 Data loss due to external attacker—hacker: 5 Data loss due to external attacker—malware: 7 Data unavailability due to massive DoS attack: 4 Data loss due to other circumstances: 2

Category 3: Personnel Loss or Unavailability Personnel loss due to natural disaster: 4 Personnel loss due to mass illness: 2 Personnel loss due to other circumstances: 2

Disastrous Events The following events have been evaluated and determined to be realistic threats to the continued operations of ABC Co. They are listed here along with probabilities of occurrence and are ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being highly unlikely and 10 being highly probable. This information was extracted from the business impact analysis for ABC Co. For additional details, see that document.

530 Appendix A Sample Business Continuity Plan for ABC Co.

Category 4: Services Loss or Unavailability Power loss: 7 Internet loss: 7 Telephony loss: 6 Other service loss (water, gas, sewage, and so on): 3

Category 5: Other Potential Loss or Unavailability Rioting: 2 Terrorist attack: 4 Hostage situation: 5 Animal or insect infestation: 1 Other potential loss or unavailability: 2

Data Protection Strategies The director of IT will continue standard data backup strategies from the on-site RAID array. Specifically, Monday through Thursday are on-site differential backups. Friday’s full backups are stored off-site at a fire-proof and theft-proof location to be determined by the director. The organization will also engage in remote journaling for critical transactions.

{Additional details as needed}

Business Continuity Strategies

Option A: Relocate Operations to Alternate Site 1—Downtown Disaster Sanctuary Facilities Under this option, all designated operations (per BIA) are relocated according to the deployment plan below. This facility provides an open production bay, organized with portable cubicle walls, desks, power, available Internet and telephone services (not activated), parking, and restroom facil- ities. This facility can support temporary data center functions, but no dedicated HVAC, power, or Internet access services are predesignated. Contact information is available in Appendix A-1.